#DaytonaBeach Christmas Boat Parade - 5 December 2015

• published: 18 Nov 2015
• views: 15

http://daytonabeachchristmasboatparade.com - The Daytona Beach Christmas Boat Parade will be held on Saturday, 5 December 2015. The parade starts at 5:30 PM at the Seabreeze bridge. You can enter your boat thru 3 December, but you have to attend one of two Captains Meetings, or you won't be allowed to participate. We're still accepting sponsors. We will be producing videos, highlighting the parade, which will include sponsor recognition, so there will be exposure for a long time. There is a Q&A; page, but we wanted to highlight a few of the elements of a boat parade. Question: Why aren’t the boats spaced further apart? Answer: We ask the Captains to maintain 50 yards between boats and they do their best, but we also have to consider the bridges. The bridge tenders work with us to provide the boats longer bridge openings than normal, but they also have to deal with vehicle traffic and have asked for our help in keeping the opening time to a minimum. With that in mind we have two things that help us accomplish that goal. First, we try to group boats that require a bridge opening towards the front of the parade. Second, we try to keep the spacing at around 50 yards to get the taller boats thru in a timely manner to allow for the bridges to close. Question: Why can’t the boats go slower? Answer: The simple answer is steerage, but we recognize it may not be as apparent to those on the shore as to how difficult it is to navigate a boat. All attempts are made to keep the parade speed down to 4.5 to 5 knots thru the water, which is about as slow as some boats can go and maintain steerage; this is easier said than done. There are many factors to be considered for our area here in Daytona Beach, such as wind, tide, and type of boat. All of these factors have to be considered when safely operating a boat in tight quarters, in the dark, and with a parade route that goes in and out of several marines which have very narrow channels. All of which make it very challenging when incoming and outgoing boats meet, so steerage is very important to safety. Wind: The width of the Halifax River creates a lot of open water for wind to build in strength. This can cause the boats speed to increase or push the boats out of the channel requiring the Captain to adjust their speed to maintain steerage. We have been very fortunate as of late with wind and we hope that is the same this year. Tide: This year we will have an incoming tide vs. last year when it was outgoing. This should help maintain a speed of 4.5 to 5 knots thru the water while the speed over ground (visible speed) in the Intracoastal Waterway should be slower. Type of Boat: Some boats (single engine power and sail) have no trouble at this speed, but larger boats with twin engines often have to run on only one engine to keep their speed down, this makes steering more of a challenge. While in the Intracoastal Waterway where it’s wider and the boats are traveling in the same direction this isn’t as much of a problem, but once the boats enter the marina channels with two way traffic, it’s unsafe to try to steer without the use of both engines and thus the speed may increase. Question: Why does the parade start at 5:30 pm? Answer: There are two key factors that have dictated when we start – visibility and Awards dinner. Visibility: Sunset is at 5:25 pm and we have found that having the boats line up while there is still enough light to easily see the line-up numbers on the other boats works best for the Captains. It also helps to have a little light available once the parade starts for the Captains to get their boats going and spaced properly. Awards dinner: After the parade the participants are invited to HRYC for the awards dinner and we like to give the participants a chance to sit down and enjoy some food before we start the awards presentation. The parade route takes over 1 ½ hours to complete and by the time they get their boats docked, it can be after 8:00 pm when some of them make it back to HRYC. With all the hard work involved with decorating and piloting (in the dark) their boats, we want to make sure that they enjoy their time at the HRYC. "Deck the Halls B", "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ ---- Find out more: http://kenenglish.com http://daytonabeachvideomarketing.com http://daytonainternettv.com http://mediamojoguy.com http://twitter.com/kenenglish http://twitter.com/mediamojoguy http://paiinthesky.org https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=710054426